These remarks seem to indicate

that Mr. Mallet and the county water department are still not considering

all alternative methods. What about a mechanical clamshell bucket technique

from a barge? The advantage of this method is that dredged silt can be

loaded into transport barges then unloaded into lined trucks and hauled

to a final disposal area.

It's extremely cost efficient

because dredging costs are calculated by the amount of cubic yards removed,

not by an hourly dollar cost as charged by many "pumping" companies.

Piling it up and letting it

dry out may be a great way to do it on extremely large river projects

where there is a lot more maneuverability with conventional pumping equipment,

but not necessarily in Lake Peachtree.

This project has delayed because

of decisions about what to do with the silt. The silt removal method I'm

referring to minimizes disturbance to the lake shore and surrounding property

because it only requires one access point to the lake and silt is then

hauled away. This type of dredging has been used on all the lakes of Callaway

Gardens, the large lake at Stone Mountain, Lake Lanier for the city of

Atlanta, St. Ives Country Club lakes in Duluth, and more recently, the

city of Palmetto reservoir.

As with Lake Peachtree there

was no suitable place to pile up the silt and let it dry out. There was

no "pump this stuff out and let it dry out" situation. For your

reference, the Palmetto reservoir dredging cost was $200,000 to remove

and haul off 10,000 cubic yards. So, it's reasonable to expect that the

cost for Lake Peachtree should be under $500,000.

Finding a solution to this

dredging process seems to be a colossal undertaking between the Water

Department and Peachtree City. In my opinion, with a little more research

as was done by the Palmetto City engineers, we wouldn't have all this

continuing endless discussion.

The one bright spot about this

ongoing process is that the county has considered an alternative method

to dredging. The $1.4 million spent in 1986 to drain and excavate thousands

of cubic yards of silt from one end of Lake Peachtree to build an island,

which in itself displaces a significant amount of usable water, was a

complete debacle.

Finally, Peachtree City has

to be careful if they do decide to "pile" up the silt next to

City Hall. You shouldn't put it on a flood plain, and, you can't place

the fill in any surrounding wetland areas as this would violate Section

404 of the Clean Water Act.

Scott Powell

Peachtree City

[email protected]